I have had my phone for over a year with few problems. 4G recently turned on in my area, which rapidly kills my battery. Phone ran out of battery at work, which is normal. Plugged it in when I got home and it tried to start, but it seemed to stick at the initial white screen/htc logo. Pulled battery, left out for a few minutes and tried again with the same results. Left battery out of phone overnight, reinstalled battery about 12 hrs later and phone turned on and started normally. Plugged in and charged normally too. I let it charge for a few hours and it worked fine all afternoon. Came home and plugged into charger, phone charged fully until green LED came on. Unplugged charger and phone instantly went to the white HTC logo screen and started to do the startup loop fail cycle again. I can access the boot menu with the power/volume down buttons, but any selection I make in the boot menu just reverts back to the white screen again. Any help?? My phone is beyond warranty/replacement so at this point I will try anything. It is not rooted, nor do I run any task management apps or anything that has ever caused a conflict on my phone.
Hey @KPorter,
That is definitely strange behavior for your Thunderbolt! Although, I have some troubleshooting steps that may help you locate the problem. Let’s see if your phone starts in Safe Mode, this will allow you to narrow down if the problem is a physical problem with your phone or caused by something else.
To get your phone to start in safe mode, first remove your battery for 60-90 seconds, replace the battery and power your phone on. As soon as the screen powers on, press and hold your Volume Down button and continue to hold it until you reach the home screen. If successful, your phone may vibrate briefly during the startup process; this indicates that the process is working. After your phone is finished starting up, you should see the words Safe Mode in the bottom left hand corner. Test your phone with safe mode on to see if everything is functioning properly. If your phone works fine in safe mode and continues to have problems with starting normally, it may indicate that there is a larger problem. To exit safe mode on your phone, repeat the instructions above by removing your battery and restarting your phone.
While your phone may be out of warranty with your service provider KPorter, it may still be covered through us. I’d recommend calling in where one of my team mates in customer support can help you with further information on that. The contact information is located on our website at http://www.htc.com/support.
Give those troubleshooting steps a try, and shoot us a reply back with the results!
Thanks for the reply. Still not getting anywhere with the phone. It will do the boot/fail cycle for hours, and during that time nothing will change that cycle. If i leave it alone it will eventually fully start and run normally, until I power off or unplug the charger. Then it starts the boot/fail cycle again. It will also try to start as soon as you plug a charger into it if it is shut down. Plugging in the charger while it is operating normally seems to not be a problem. I tried a brand new battery, it made no difference.
I'm having the same issue, tried multiple things to resolve it to no avail. Trying to turn the phone on with the SD card dismounted, factory reset, safe mode, etc. This is becoming quite frustrating.
Some new information on this:
This evening, I reactivated my old LG Ally, because I need a phone for work. After doing so, the Thunderbolt went back to working normally. I can unplug it from the charger without it shutting off, turn it on without issue, etc. After I saw this, I reactivated the Thunderbolt thinking all would be well. I was wrong, as soon as it was reactivated, it went back into the boot loop, and stayed there. I've got a feeling the cause for the issue lies in the Verizon SIM card, and will be attempting to get a replacement for that tomorrow. I'll post back with my findings.
I am having the same issue. The town I work in is an hour and a half from the nearest Verizon store and I don't have a replacement. This is highly frustrating as I am now phoneless
I'm having this issue as well. It started about a week ago. A KPorter says, this happens when I unplug the phone. It will also happen when I try to restart the phone. I did a reset to factory setting and still have the same problem after I preformed that action.
I have found that taking out the Micro SD card resolves the issue. I have also read about copying the RUU file on the SD card to do the trick, but I don't know where that is located.
Hey all,
If you have called in and already contacted my teammates in customer support, please post back your Ticket ID if your problem is still unresolved. I will see about getting it escalated for you! You can find the contact information on our website at http://www.htc.com/support if you need the number for your area.
Now I'm having the exact problem listed here. It started this morning when I unplugged my phone from the charger like I do every night. The phone did a restart, would hit the white HTC screen, then just keep trying to restart. Tried battery pull, MicroSD card removal, reseated the MicroSD card, reseated the SIM card, then finally it started up. Charged it this afternoon and now I'm back into the no-start loop. Anyone find a fix?
I switched carriers so I sold my HTC Thuderbolt. I did a factory reset (or tried) because I didn't want all of my info in the phone. Well that was a bad idea because all I get now is this white screen with htc in green. It won't do anything else. Tried Recovery and Factory reset several times. Also found other people who had this same problem and got it fixed, but I didn't understand how they did it. Can anyone please help me with step by step instructions? I really needed the money from the phone. Tried contacting HTC for help but they were unsuccessful and wanted me to send it in to get repaired at my expense. Thank you.
My phone is doing this now too. Just started today for no reason. Worked fine this morning. Phone died. I charged it and now it just starts and the white HTC screen shows up for an hour and then it shuts off again. What the heck?
THIS IS A COMMON PROBLEM WITH THUNDEBOLT I had one about may or june of 2011 with in 2 days would not boot at all, this same problem. one thing that we know for sure is the problem stars by unplugging the chager from te phone. I just got off the phone from talking from a great guy from HTC tech support, they have never heard of this problem so resulation is goingno where. My first phone booed a few times then finally would not boot at all. The thunderboldthat I have now has ext messages from my best friend who passed away from cancer a little over a year ago. I trulhate to loose these messages, as all of my text messges, including those from my girlfriend who is gone as well. If anyone can come up with a cause and or a fix plese let me know 407 351 0876 402 405 6356 thanks!
call HTC at their customer service number and complain. HTCs customer service people doesnt know anything about it! call 866 449 8358 and complain. thats the only way it will be resolved!
I have the same issue, regardless this isn't the first issue I've had with my Thunderbolt, but it is by far the most frustrating as I am now phoneless. Needless to say when my upgrade is up in 2 weeks I'll be getting my Galaxy SIII and never getting another HTC phone. However my phone is constantly restarting itself. It doesn't get past the white screen so it then shuts down and reboots, doing this on a loop until I take the battery out. I've tried all th trouble shooting suggested here and removed the SD card but nothing works. I guess I'll take it to a store and see if it's the sim card, or if they can at least give me a crappy flip phone as a replacement until my update is up so I'm not phoneless.